Trick shot artist aims to entertain

Friday

Jul 24, 2009 at 12:01 AMJul 24, 2009 at 2:20 AM

Dan Pfanz likes guns. He is particularly savvy with pump-style shotguns.He can throw aspirins in the air and shoot them before it hits the ground. He can flip two clay targets off the toe of his boot and hit them in midair. He can neatly clip two small targets from where they hang on a pole 10 feet in the air and smash them with a shotgun blast before they strike the dirt.

Tara Mattimoe

Dan Pfanz likes guns.

He is particularly savvy with pump-style shotguns. He can throw aspirins in the air and shoot them before they hit the ground. He can flip two clay targets off the toe of his boot and hit them in midair. He can neatly clip two small targets from where they hang on a pole 10 feet in the air and smash them with a shotgun blast before they strike the dirt.

Pfanz is what he calls an “exhibition shooter.” He shoots only pump guns and only for donations.

He’s performed exhibitions at sports clubs across central Illinois, including the River Valley Sportsman’s Club in Germantown Hills, Little John Conservation Club in Victoria and the Oak Ridge Sportsman’s Club in Mackinaw.

Pfanz says that he most enjoys performing his gun tricks for children.

“I enjoy shooting for kids the most,” he says. “They just have fun.”

Pfanz recently did a show for a Cub Scouts day camp while at the Little John Conservation Club.

The most popular demonstration he does for children, Pfanz says, starts with a box full of helium balloons. After he shoots the lock off the box, the balloons go up in air, and “I let them get way up there before I start shooting them one by one,” he says. “They start getting nervous and think I waited too long. Then I bring them down.”

In another show he does for the children, Pfanz says, he shoots a balloon full of little pieces of paper that drift down and give directions to stashes of candy that have been planted around the area.

For the adults, the majority of Pfanz’s tricks involve him throwing objects, like a handful of aspirin or some golf balls, into the air and picking them off with explosive little poofs. When told that he has pretty good eyesight for an old guy (he’s 62), he laughs and says he doesn’t even need glasses.

“The off-the-foot shot and the pole shot are my two most difficult shots,” Pfanz says.

He also does a trick called the mongoose, in which he has a coil thrower trapped inside a spring-loaded box. When Pfanz shoots it open, up flip different items, which he shoots out of the air.

He also performs a maneuver called the “juicemaker,” which he starts out by shooting a grapefruit before moving onto an orange, an apple, a tomato, a lemon and finally a grape. He tops it all off with an explosion of whipped cream that rains down on the pulverized fruit.

Pfanz sometimes hits the targets holding his gun upside down and sometimes shoots his own hulls as they come spitting out of his gun. He has plenty more tricks, all surprisingly quick and certainly impressive. Sometimes he misses — but not often.

Pfanz has eight guns: a Browning, a Remington, a Mossburg, a Savage and others. Pfanz won’t say what his favorite gun is, he says, because “I don’t want to advertise for any particular brand. Besides, I like ‘em all.”

Pfanz, who currently works as a security guard at the Mason County Courthouse, is a retired Caterpillar Inc. worker and was a member of the Forman Fire Department for 20 years. He says he got started with exhibition shooting about five years ago after watching a showman in Springfield doing tricks with handguns.

“I thought, heck, I can do that,” Pfanz remembers. He doesn’t, however, copy other people’s tricks, he says, and he works hard at staying original.

“I’m ahead of my time,” he says with humor, pointing an extension tube he placed on his Browning before the company came out with such a model. Modified, the gun can hold seven rounds instead of the regular five, and he uses for his seven-ingredient juicemaker trick. He says it’s the only gun of his that he’s tinkered with.

Pfanz often includes his family in his gun-toting escapades. His nephew, Darrin, regularly helps him with his exhibitions, setting the props up and helping with the production. “He’s my right-hand man,” Pfanz said.

Pfanz’s grandsons, Alec and D.J., also have been known to tag along to his shows and are even learning some tricks with a rifle themselves.

“It’s pretty cool,” says 9-year-old Alec of his grandfather’s gun skills. “I like the aspirin pull the best. I don’t know anybody else that can do that.”

Not surprisingly, Pfanz is an ardent supporter of the right to bear arms. “When I put a show on, my biggest speech is about the NRA and the Illinois State Rifle Association,” he says. “If you’re not a member, join. They’re the two organizations that sportsmen have working for them for their Second Amendment rights.”

He also urges the participation of youngsters in the sport of shooting and contends that “to get involved in shooting sports, gun safety is always promoted first.”

In addition to exhibition shooting, Pfanz is an avid hunter — an activity with which, like the gun shows, his family is included.

“We go out with the beagle hounds and a camper trailer,” he says. “We hunt rabbits, squirrels and doves. Boy, do we have fun.”

“The Pfanz Hunting Team,” as he calls it, ventures out as much as possible between September and January and consists of Pfanz; his brother Ron, his nephew Darrin, Darrin’s son Justin, and Alec and D.J. — and Pfanz’s two hunting beagles, Pounder and BoJack. A third beagle, Pete, was recently given to D.J. and Alec because, Pfanz said, “he kept running the rabbits the wrong way.”

Regardless of his lackluster hunting skills, Pete will most likely go on this year’s hunting trips, Pfanz says, because he knows his grandsons won’t want to leave the dog behind. “And he’ll still run the rabbits the wrong way,” Pfanz says shaking his head. Then he smiles. “But those boys are good for that dog. They’re good with animals — just like that chicken.”

The story behind “that chicken” — a story that Pfanz is quite fond of — involves a large black crested chicken who overcame the odds last January, somehow making it through several bitterly cold days and nights without shelter.

“There was a raccoon one night in the chicken coop,” says 12-year-old D.J., “and the next morning I couldn’t find my favorite chicken. We thought the raccoon ate it.”

Three days later, D.J. said, they noticed an animal control agent across the street. When they asked him what he had, the man replied, “a black chicken.” It was theirs.

D.J. was glad to have her back, he said.

“Ever since we got her, she let me pick her up,” D.J. says as he gently places the chicken back in the grass. “She still lets me.”

“That chicken was cold for a few days,” says Dan’s wife, Caroline. “I don’t know how it survived out there.”

Caroline says she was never around guns before she met her husband. After that, things changed quickly.

“Since I’ve been with him, it’s been guns and beagles,” Caroline says good-naturedly. “We got married 17 years ago, and ever since then, if it doesn’t shoot or bark, forget it!”

Joking aside, Caroline says that she appreciates her husband’s skills.

“I fully support him,” she says of his shooting. “I think he’s very talented. I’m very proud of what he does.”

Caroline says that one secret of their marriage is that Pfanz likes to stay busy.

“His mind is always working on another adventure. He always has to be doing something,” she says. “He’s never under my feet, which is good.”

Pekin Daily Times

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